One of the principal advantages of computers is the ease with which computers enable users to change and revise files. Before computers were available for word processing, making changes in a document involved, at a minimum, physically cutting and pasting together usable sections; at worst, changing a document involved someone having to retype the entire document. Using a computer, a document or other content stored on a computer can be retrieved, the changes desired can be made using an appropriate editing program, and the document can then be saved once again.
As is well known, computers have become increasingly more powerful and easier to use. For example, computers are easily connected in communication with other computers over local area networks and wide area networks, such as the Internet. As a result, it is possible for users to share documents and other information using different computers that can be thousands of miles apart from one another.
With the evolution of computing systems, retrieving, revising, and saving data have become easier. Not long ago, to retrieve a document or other object, a user had to remember a specific function key or other key string that should be pressed to initiate a retrieval command. Once the command was entered, the user either had to remember and key in the name of the data file or review a listing of the names of documents available on a storage device until the desired data file was found. Also, prior to the proliferation of graphical user interface operating systems, file names were typically limited to eight characters. Thus, merely trying to identify a desired file for retrieval was not a simple matter.
Once a file was retrieved, the user was able to make changes to the file, but again, the user typically had to remember the specific function keys or other key-strings designated for initiating particular commands. Because of the numerous permutations and combinations of the SHIFT, ALT, and CTRL keys, and the function keys that might have to be used to enter commands in revising a document, users commonly relied upon keyboard overlay templates that listed all the available commands associated with each key or keystroke combination. Saving the revised document also required similar, non-user friendly processes.
Fortunately, the development of graphical user interface-driven operating systems has made retrieving, revising, and storing files much simpler. Instead of employing cryptic commands, users can readily retrieve and manipulate documents using a mouse or other pointing devices to point, click, and drag documents between storage directories. Combining these easier-to-use interfaces with local area networks and wide area networks that can access a common storage has made sharing files locally or over vast distances much simpler.
While the contrast between today's networked, graphical user interface-driven systems with the standalone, command-driven systems of recent decades makes the latter seem almost quaint by comparison, the evolution of computer technology continues. Just as graphical user interface-driven systems have improved human-machine interaction over predecessor systems, touch-screen devices, tablet PCs, and other developments may soon render the users' dependence upon pointing devices seem even more antiquated.
For example, the MIT Media Lab, as reported by Brygg Ullmer and Hiroshi Ishii in “The metaDESK: Models and Prototypes for Tangible User Interfaces,” Proceedings of UIST 10/1997:14-17,” has developed another form of “keyboardless” machine interface. The metaDESK includes a generally planar graphical surface that not only displays computing system text and graphic output, but also receives user input by recognizing objects placed against the graphical surface. The combined object recognition and display capability of the graphical surface of the metaDESK is facilitated using infrared (IR) lamps, an IR camera, a video camera, a video projector, and mirrors disposed beneath the surface of the metaDESK. The mirrors reflect the graphical image projected by the projector onto the underside of the graphical display surface to provide images that are visible to a user from above the graphical display surface. The IR camera can detect IR reflections from the undersurface of the objects placed on the graphical surface.
Others have been developing similar keyboardless interfaces. For example, papers published by Jun Rekimoto of the Sony Computer Science Laboratory, Inc., and associates describe a “HoloWall” and a “HoloTable” that display images on a surface and use IR light to detect objects positioned adjacent to the surface.
Although inventions such as the metaDESK respond to objects disposed on a graphical display surface, the metaDESK responds to the contemporaneous placement and movement of the objects on the display surface to carryout predefined functions, such as displaying or moving the display of a map of the MIT campus. Users of computer systems also need to be able to manipulate and reassociate data files such that the modified and reassociated files can be easily retrieved and/or shared with others locally or across a distance. Thus, it would be desirable to provide an intuitive, user-friendly manner to use an object to engage an interactive display surface so as to manipulate and store data. The prior art has used objects on a display surface for simply accessing data associated with an object, such as the map data that are displayed by the metaDESK when a specific object is placed on the display surface.